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First things first, I have to admit that I love performance. I don't feel nervous. I thrive in it. I become almost manic because I can finally tell the story that I am dying to tell the world, using my body - because using language always seems to be too vague, because no language can ever have the right vocabulary to express feelings.
Being on stage is being at home for me. I love the preparation. Doing my hair and putting on my makeup is all a ritual. Every little thing has to be right. I have to put on the just the right amount of blush, darken my brows, and line my eyes until just so. I am also obsessive about not being able to go on stage (or leave the house, as a matter of fact) without a pair of smashing earrings, regardless of their size.
Everything is important. I perform often as a professional bellydancer, albeit these performances are in much smaller settings. I barely have to think about my performances anymore. It's a routine. It's just like going to work in the morning for most people. My whole day is still affected by it. How much I sleep. What I eat. My daily grooming rituals. I also usually don't cut my hair or have a drastic diet change when I have an important show coming up. Everything should go as smooth as possible.
Julia performs bellydancing at The Chai.
Bellydancing and Flamenco is not easy to combine!
Sounds like a lot, but it's all just second nature. It looks like a lot when it's all written down, just like it would be pages of pages of description to write down every single thing that the body does in order to do something as simple and mundane as taking in a breath of air. That's how performance is for me.
So if I am already a performer and had no nervous problems with doing a scary first solo, why am I blogging about it? To share my magnificent self with others? Not true. I had my sets of interesting challenges. Blame it on my guts and ego.
Few weeks ago, when Kasandra asked me to choreograph a short solo for Tangos por Fiesta, unlike perhaps many new students, I thought to myself, "That's it?"
And, the next thought in my head was,
"It's por fiesta. Why choreograph? Just wing it."
My original family used to say that even if I was dead poor and on the streets, I would be still be full of guts and ego, and be just as stubborn. I didn't like to hear that, as it didn't sound pretty or attractive. It turns out, what they said is probably true. And it turns out, it isn't such a bad thing, after all.
Speaking of guts, ego and stubbornness, I badly wanted to audition for a full Tientos solo to celebrate my two year anniversary dancing flamenco. Very ambitious. I thought that by choosing Tientos, a 4/4 rhythm, instead of a 12 compás rhythm, I already was doing myself a huge "beginner" favour. I went through a stage where I wanted to drop the Tangos por Fiesta solo and focus on preparing the Tientos, because I would have to eventually go into a Tangos anyway.
Good thing Kasandra talked me out of that. She only suggested that I start small and focus. I have trouble thinking that way. It was a good advise to follow. Not to mention, being a newbie means that it is that much harder to find a cuadro for my Tientos solo, which really did prove to be true. Yet, my heart felt very ready to do something on my own.
The preparation process was simple yet challenging. My guts kept saying, it's "just tangos." But I am also a mother to a 11 month old who refuses to nap and wants to be entertained constantly, with no other family to help me either than my partner who is at work all the time.
Julia and her son, sweet Ren...
who incidentally has been around our dance studio all year in a baby backpack!! He's going to have great compas.
I have been a professional bellydancer for the past four years, which corporally really complicated things. My teaching and weekly performing bellydance resets my kinetic memory of what flamenco feels like. Classical oriental bellydance is often lead with the chest, similar to jazz or ballet. Flamenco is lead by entrañas, which roughly translates as guts. The two dance forms have remotely related history, but are as different as English and Spanish is in its whole - two languages that share the same alphabet and Latin as a root, but use different sets of phonetics.
In flamenco versus bellydance, the hip movements can look similar but they are not the same. The arms and floreo, of course, are not the same. Even just the basic stance is not the same. Flamenco is a full dance form on its own, and one cannot meet flamenco only half way. It's either fully flamenco or nothing. Unfortunately, bellydance is my job and I make a living out of it. I also recently made a decision not to return to ballet, at least for a while. While I was attending Isabel Bayón workshop, she continuously corrected (and at one point, even laughed at) my turn out (or duck feet, as my dad and ex-ex stepmother used to call it), which I have been working so hard in eliminating the past two years.
With many digressions, the point still stands. It was not as easy as it seemed to me at first, and it was a good choice to do a shorter, simpler solo to start off. Choreographing the dance was not hard. It took me about 2 hours to have a good idea of what I wanted to do during the 2 minute dance - with my son's many interruptions, of course. The fine tuning was the hard part.
During class, I executed my choreography. When I finished the dance, I saw Kasandra's face, and thought...
"Damn... what did I do now?"
"Not flamenco looking enough. The moves are okay. It's just not executed right," Kasandra analyzes.
With some adjustments here and there, I finally got to a point where it was satisfactory. Since that Tangos class, every time I went to flamenco class, I started to internally beat myself, telling my body to not forget what it feels like to be flamenco. A great dancer should be able to switch between the two no problem, just as easily as an accomplished flamenco dancer should be able to go from dancing flamenco to clasico español without compromising one or another. This is a hugely difficult task to do it well.
Once I finally got to the point where my dance was acceptable, I realized how bad my initial "just improvise" idea was. I am very used to improvising dance all the time, because bellydance, like flamenco, is a solo dance and is largely about improvisation. After so many years, I had forgotten that it takes time to acquire the skill to be able to improvise on the spot and come up with something harmonious, beautiful and exciting. It's a skill that I don't yet have with flamenco. Like Oscar always says, "It's a time thing." Yes, it definitely is.
After putting myself through much emotional tornado (it's a common habit), I often laugh at my intensity and tell myself and others that it's my "Aries sun, Leo rising, and Gemini moon." Whether this has any credibility or not, it is still clear that I am full of guts and stubbornness. However, I also know that flamenco is not something that you just pick up. It takes years of hard work and training. This is what is so attractive about flamenco. Every little llamada or remate takes hours of practice to make it look magnificent. The ultimate task is to be able to remain silent, yet able to shake and demand the whole room with aire.
Julia doing her Tangos por Fiesta at the Capilano Performing Arts Theatre on July 26, 2009 for "El Jaleo de Verano". Congratulations, chica!
I learned so much from doing this solo. Doing a short por fiesta solo is great, because it's a reachable, manageable goal that one can learn so much from, without the stress of doing a full solo. Whether one has decades of dance experience or not, with this experience I truly felt it in my body that with flamenco, you need to start from the scratch, and take the beatings of being a beginner again. There are no shortcuts or ways around it.
So after all this... how did the performance go?
"Toma que toma."
Take it or leave it.
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